Air Force Delta

Without A Wing Or A Prayer! If you believe that films like Top Gun give you a realistic idea of what it is like to take control of a jet fighter, then you have been taken for a fool! It is guaranteed to be nothing like that in the real world. Here's a great example why: Have you seen what Kelly McGillis looked like in that film? Have you seen what she looks like in real life? Once you have pieced that little puzzle together, then it won't take you long to realise that the life of a Top Gun is probably boring, unattractive and frustrating. A bit like Air Force Delta in fact!

Flights of Fancy

In the game you are the new 'hotshot' recruit, who is pushed to the forefront of the action. From then on, there are a series of missions to complete, with a collection of planes to choose from. Each mission has its own special objective but – as you'll soon notice – they all look and play the same. Despite the effort to make it seem as real as possible, this game suffers from not giving the player any of the excitement of a dogfight in the sky.

The jet moves in all the directions it should, but in actual fact, your plane is just stuck moving ever-forward. All the enemies come towards you and zoom past and the game doesn't allow you to turn around to go back and destroy whatever it was you missed! This also means that it can be really hard to avoid incoming missiles as the handling doesn't get you out of the way in time. The targeting system, at best, can't seem to make its mind up what it is targeting, and power ups/extra weapons are few and far between! Despite early promise, this game soon fails to deliver. What is left is a plain, dull, and less than satisfying game!

Last month, we showed you the first screenshots of Konami's flight combat game, Air Force Delta for the Japanese Dreamcast. Konami of America just announced it will be bringing the game over to the U.S., for a November 1999 release. With Namco, Capcom and Konami supporting the Dreamcast, the machine's third-party support is looking simply fab, wouldn't you say? We'll have more on AFD later...